A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
As part of a project funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and led by the University of York’s Department of Chemistry, researchers took part in a two-week experiment designed to test the feasibility of using new techniques on future space missions.
The experiment involved firing laser pulses between two astronomical observatories on the Canary Islands to test the practicality of continuous monitoring of greenhouse gases. During the two weeks, laser beams lit up the sky over the Atlantic Ocean with green pulses of light, creating a Star Wars film effect.
The experiment was designed to demonstrate the concept of using infrared differential absorption spectroscopy as a way of making extremely accurate measurements of the concentrations in the atmosphere of trace gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.
The new approach will involve linking two satellites orbiting Earth; one acting as a transmitter and the other as a receiver, with the atmospheric composition being probed as the beam travels between them.
Dr Barry Thomas, who manages the ESA project, said: “Radio occultation, which tracks signals from satellites as they rise or set behind Earth, is a well-established method of sensing the atmosphere. However the approach we were testing is revolutionary in that it uses shortwave laser pulses.
“Individual chemical components in the atmosphere absorb at specific wavelengths and the absorption affects the beam intensity. From the variation in intensity we can calculate concentrations of trace gases and also wind speed.”
The core team of scientists involved in the experiment were from the Universities of York and Manchester, the University of Graz in Austria and the University of Jena, Germany, and together they successfully recorded the first data of this kind.
For the full story, visit the University of York website.
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